Parents fighting to keep a nursery room for under-twos have gathered enough signatures for their petition to be debated by Brighton and Hove City Council.
Families with children at Bright Start Nursery started a petition on the Change.org website calling on the council to retain the baby room.
They said that the nursery was one of the few affordable places in the centre of Brighton to provide care for children under two years old.
More than 1,250 have signed the petition and it is now due to be debated at a meeting of the full council on Thursday (11 July).
The council is moving Bright Start Nursery from the old Slipper Baths, in Barrack Yard, by the Prince Regent swimming pool, to the Tarner Family Hub, on the corner of Ivory Place and Morley Street, Brighton.
The move has faced opposition from parents since it was announced last November.
The petition said: “The nursery has a high proportion of children with special educational needs and disabilities and a high proportion with English as an additional language but the council has not undertaken a full equalities impact assessment on the impact of the baby room closure.
“The council has also failed to consider the other locations for the nursery, particularly co-locating the nursery in the nearby St Bartholomew’s School, which the council is trying to close.
“We’re calling on the council to rethink this decision and protect affordable city centre childcare for under-twos.”
The parents’ representatives will have three minutes to present the petition to councillors who will then have up to 15 minutes to debate it.
Since the petition was started, leading Labour councillors have said that every child enrolled at the nursery who needs a place in September has been found a place somewhere.
The deputy leader of the council, Labour councillor Jacob Taylor, said that the nursery had been threatened with closure by the previous Green-led administration.
In May, in response to parents’ concerns, Councillor Taylor said: “Despite massive real-terms cuts in funding from government, this Labour council is very proud to be maintaining all seven council-run nurseries in the city – a vital investment in early years.
“Most other councils stopped running nurseries years ago, including East and West Sussex.”
The full council is due to meet at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (11 July) at 4.30pm. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Fair play on getting the petition together. If there are other reasonable options to be explored regarding this nursery then it is right to debate the merits of further research.